It’s tough being a GMC Responsible Officer. All those doctors on your books, each one a lurking Shipman. Of course, the Herr Brother Officers at the GMC and the Department of Health appreciate the terrible stresses Responsible Officers face. The Herr Brother Officers wish to help the Responsible Officers in their duties, and so have commissioned the Herr Revalidation Support Team to devise eine support system to help support ze Herr Responsible Officers in the execution of zair duties. And so it is that ze Herr Revalidation Support Team is pleased and proud to present to all Herr RO colleagues ze one – and only – Responsible Officer Dashboard!
This brilliant conception of the Herr RST borrows the traffic light labelling scheme for food and applies it to all the doctors under the Responsible Officer’s surveillance. Those doctors who behave themselves get coded green, those who are suspect (or unknown) amber, and bad doctors show up as red. Responsible Officers can see – at a glance – who has – and has not – been behaving themselves:
Woe-betide those who score red. Red means danger: “Assessment of this information demonstrates a significant concern for patient safety or the quality of care which requires immediate referral for further investigation and management (emphasis added)”:
Surely Dr No is not alone in thinking that reducing doctors career prospects to green-amber-red is a traffic light too far?
Clearly they are preparing for a posse of doctors / Responsible Officers that are as thick as mince. What other establishment nowadays feels it is necessary to explain how to log in and log out of a website? Would patients feel comfortable to be treated by a doctor who was so out of touch that they couldn’t work out this common procedure for themselves? I think when the time comes to revalidate this witch she will cast a powerful electric spell that fuses all their damned lights!
“Surely Dr No is not alone in thinking that reducing doctors career prospects to green-amber-red is a traffic light too far?”
I don’t know! Why worry if you trust yourself will never fall within the amber/red lights?!
Learner – there are two problems. Firstly, you don’t get to decide whether you are red, amber or green. Someone else does. And that person may not like you (for those who are not in medicine, you may be shocked to learn that it is not always sweetness and light on the wards and in the clinics…). What is toxic here is the introduction of a regular formalised yet untried, untested opaque and unregulated system wherein every doctors ability to continue work comes under arbitrary judgement by apparatchiks.
Secondly – we all make mistakes. I am sure most of us have red days. The only way to avoid that is not to practice – and that is what I am sure a lot of doctors will decide to do when they see the revalidation train heading their way.
It may not be appreciated by patients and the general public that Responsible Officers will not be selected because they are more altruistic than the rest of their profession or better doctors or superior beings. Indeed many of them may be less so. Some may be the “Yes Men” and “Yes Women” of medicine. Others may climbing a greasy pole in the hope there will be financial gain from their status. They’ll be a few exceptions to this of course, but I’ll bet none of the RO’s will ever be rewarded a Nobel Prize in medicine or go down in history as great public servants.
The UK medical profession gets what they fight for
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It all looks rather like the useless ARCP system to me. If you fill the form you will nearly certainly pass. If you fail then the Trust will have to provide remedial support, the cost of unfair dismissal cases will mean that few if any doctors will be forced out as a result.
So expensive, time consuming, pointless, unwanted and hated by disenfranchised doctors. It ticks all the right boxes at the department of health and sure to happen.